


So, what’s your name?

by Adamarks



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: 80s AU, Ily clev happy birthday, M/M, Soulmate AU, Sweet Angel, True Love, a night of whirlwind romance, rock titties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26516530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adamarks/pseuds/Adamarks
Summary: A night of evil beavers, crop tops, Wonder Bread, and Tab soda lead Shepard to someone an old friend told him to wait for.
Relationships: Simon Snow/Shepard
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21
Collections: Simpard is life





	So, what’s your name?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [clevelandy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clevelandy/gifts).



> [Here’s a playlist for the fic!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6vsWxUEl2mReXv4CBUxHEi?si=m86TTA4vRPW1LsJ3vixryQ)
> 
> Happy birthday clev!!!! Ily and hope you enjoy this shit storm 🥰

_Point Pleasant West Virginia, 1983_

Its name was Jim. I don’t know why I’d been surprised. They always have these really, _really_ typical names. (Bigfoot’s was Karen.)

It just seemed like a multidimensional being with a penchant for premonition and red eyes wouldn’t be named Jim. (It’s not even short for James.) 

Jim took a long pull from the blunt. I watched the smoke filter from its beak. _Smoky beak. Sooooo cool._

“Shepard,” it said, in a voice like a little flute. 

“Hmmm?”

“Listen, listen.” It patted my thigh, dead serious. “Listen.” 

“Liiistening.”

“You have a— like a soulmate, dude.” 

I gasped. 

“He’s, like, your other _half.”_

“Whoaaa— wait. _‘He?’”_

“Yeah, his name is Simon.” 

I stared at him, mouth agape, before he handed me the joint. I took a hit and looked into the distance.

“Huh…” 

  
  


_Wales, 1985_

  
  


I swung into the corner store and slammed the door behind me. 

“Ya alright there, mate?” 

I look up, gasping, to see a bored white dude looking at me like I’ve just grown two extra heads. 

_Oh shit._

“Yeah,” I wheeze, tossing him a thumbs up. “Just-just jogging. Gotta get that exercise.” _In the middle of the night._

He looks me up and down. _Checking me out?_

I look down; okay, yeah, maybe the heart sweater Gammy knitted me under my jean jacket doesn’t really scream _athleticism_. 

The dude just shrugs, though, and goes back to his magazine. 

I push my glasses up and chance a peek out the window— nothing. 

Cool, cool, cool cool cool. I lost them. _Thank g—_

Something slams against the door, and I brace myself to keep it shut. I chance a glance out the window and see two razor sharp beaver teeth scraping against the glass. 

“Sugar,” I mumble. 

“Oi, what’s goin’ on?” The guy grabs his can of Tab and stalks over to me. He’s in a crop top with _Sweet Angel_ written on it. Ironic. He looks like anything but. 

The door jolts. “Nothing much,” I tell him. 

He opens his mouth to respond, when there’s a slam against the window. I look and see a reptilian eye glaring at me, followed by a nasty hiss that makes my skin crawl. 

“Oh jeez,” I say. 

“Fuck me,” says the guy. 

The door jostles violently, and I stumble forward. Before I know it, the dude is grabbing my arm, pulling me behind him. Somehow his pop ends up in my hand. 

The pissed off afanc bursts through the door with a wicked snarl. The guy rears back, the afanc’s beaver maw opens—

And he gives it a fucking left hook to the jaw. 

Its head twists sickly, and bodega-boxer-extraordinaire uses that split second to kick it right in the chest. It goes wheeling back as he wheels on me. 

“Run!” He says, grabbing his Tab. 

I mean, I do. Duh. 

I follow him to the back of the store. An _a-ha_ band sweatshirt wrapped around his hips swings as he runs. _Meh._ They’re not my favorite, but they’re not bad. 

We crash through the backdoor and out into a damp, dingy alley. 

“Are ya scared of heights?” 

I look around, expecting to find a fire escape or something. “Not especially.” 

“Sick.” 

He chugs the rest of his pop and lifts up the back of his shirt. What, is he planning to fight this thing naked? Greek Olympics style? (I wouldn’t be mad about it.) 

And then… 

“Holy shit.” 

Two massive wings push out from his back. They kinda look like bat wings, but spiky. And red. 

“Dude, those are so rad—“ the guy turns and chucks his empty can past me. I hear a pained squeak. (Guess it followed us through the shop.) “Are you, like, a demon or—“ 

He grabs my arm and yanks me towards him, wrapping an arm around my waist. “Hold on,” he grunts. 

“Yeah, sure, of course,” I hold onto his neck and his wings start pumping. This is _awesome._ Two creatures in one night. _Score._ “You don’t have the tail and horns like most demons. Oh _shit,_ are you a fae? I thought you guys hadn’t been seen in over two hundred years—“

We lift off the ground and I shut up as we rise up through the alley. He’s obviously planning on ignoring me for now, anyway. 

We clear the roof and wind starts whipping at my face. I hold onto my glasses for dear life. I can’t afford to break another pair on this trip. 

We bank to the left and I get a savage chill. It’s mid-November; I don’t know how my knight in flying armor isn’t freezing his tits off. (Literally. His shirt has risen up because of his wings. The only things left to the imagination are his collarbones.) 

He does _feel_ pretty cold. Like there’s no heat beneath the surface. The dude doesn’t seem to care, though. Or notice. 

“So, uh,” I scream over the wind, “where are we headed?!” 

“Back to my flat!” 

Oh _hell_ yes. My friends at the Magical Creature Investigation Club are gonna shit bricks when I tell them about this one. 

-

“-beautiful blue skies. You should really visit sometime.” 

“Okay.” 

_Wait, really?_

We land on a roof with a thud. My shoe skids awkwardly against the shingles. His wings fold gracelessly behind him, one of the points scraping the roof. 

They’re so fucking _cool._

Wingman clomps over to a skylight and swings it open. 

“C’mere, I’ll lower you down.” 

_Now I’m getting to go into his house?_ This has to be, like, third base for cryptid hunting. I can’t tell if I’m getting really good at this or if he’s just mega trusting. (Or maybe he’s gonna eat me.) 

“You’re not going to eat me, right?” I ask as he scoops me up under the armpits. “Because that’d be pretty bogus, not gonna lie.” 

He snorts and starts lowering me in to his home _(fuck yeah)._ “No, I’m not.”

He lets go and I drop only a couple feet. I throw up the “ok” hand symbol. “Nice.” 

He drops down next to me, landing with a thump that rattles the furniture. 

I survey the apartment: dirty mag open on the coffee table, a load of laundry on the kitchen counter, a broken lamp (?).

“Nice place you got here,” I say, tilting my head to look at the porn magazine. Something seems—

“Thanks.” There’s a click, and then the broken lamp blinks to life. 

Now that there’s light, I see that the lady spread lewdly across the centerfold is… scaly. (Literally.) With cat eyes. (Literally.) And a tail. And w—

“Want something t’ eat?”

I whip my head up to see him waving two pieces of Wonder Bread at me from the kitchenette. 

“Uh, yeah, sure. Thank you.” 

He turns back to the bread, and I return to the dragon-lady porn. I check to make sure he’s paying me no mind, and then I flip to the cover. 

**“MONSTER LOVE”** it says in big bold lettering. My jaw drops. They have nonhuman _porn mags?_ How the hell do you get your hands on one of these? Does that mean there’s, like, a nonhuman newsletter? _Biannual cryptid club meetings?_

“Mustard?”

“Huh?”

He shakes the mustard bottle at me. Not rudely. (Well, kinda.) (I more get the feeling that he’s not huge on talking.)

“Yeah. Please.”

I step around the sofa, almost slipping on a wild sweatshirt on the ground. It has a huge slit on the back. My eyes drift up to his wings. They twitch as he moves and lift with his breathing. 

They’re beautiful. I’ve never seen wings like that on something that looks so _human._ Hell, he more than _looks_ human. He _lives_ like one. It’s so weird. Most mythical beings avoid humans— let alone work at seedy 24hr shops. 

I sidle up to the counter and rest my chin on my hand. 

I got this far; I don’t see why he’d be against a couple (several) questions. 

“So…” 

He grunts. It sounds encouraging though. 

“You work at a corner store, then?”

He slides me a plate loaded with a sandwich and takes a bite of his own. 

“Not anymore,” he says through a full mouth. He turns and takes his sandwich over to a closet. 

“What? Why?” 

He grabs a duffle bag one handed and tosses onto his bed. “I can’t stay around here anymore.” 

“Wh— is it because I saw your wings? I promise I won’t tell anyone.” 

Another bite of the sandwich. He starts tossing shirts at the bag. “No, I pissed off an afanc now, too. The whole pack will be after both of us.” 

“Hold on now, they’re pack animals?” All of my research pointed to it being a solitary being. Like Nessie. Or Jim. 

He gives me a look. A look that says, _you pissed off a lethal crocodile-beaver without even knowing there was more where that one came from?_

“Yeah, fuck with one, the rest are out for blood.” 

“Hm. Shit.”

“Yeah.” 

He keeps throwing stuff at his bag while I chow down on my sandwich. It’s the wee hours of the morning, and the exhaustion is starting to wear on me. 

He sniffs some skibbies lying on the floor before tossing them into the duffle. 

This has all been wicked cool, meeting him, I mean, but I’ve barely gotten any information about _him._ He wouldn’t tell me what he was on the flight here, or why he saved me. Hell, I don’t even know his—

He opens a drawer and carefully pulls out a pair of boxing gloves. They’re a worn, brown leather and kinda grody. They’ve seen a few matches, for sure. 

“Wow,” I say, coming over to sit on the bed. “Do you you box?” 

He eyes me and tucks the gloves gently into the bag. “Yeah, used to. Back room stuff. It was good money.”

“Damn! Were you any good?”

A shrug. “Yeah.” He smiles, like he’s down on some insider stuff I’m not privy to. “Not much beats rock.” 

_Rock?_ Is he some kind of ground creature, then? Like a numpty or something? If so, why the wings? I mean, there’s always dragons… 

“Paper does.” 

He looks at me, and the air suddenly feels charged. His gaze is heavy, and out of nowhere it hits me like a truck that maybe-a-dragon-boy is… hot. He has great arms and pecs. He’s got the demeanor of an angry bulldog, but I’m kinda into it. The wings are 100% a bonus. 

His eyes drop to my lips, and mine fall to his. I’ve never made out with a dude before, but I could get into it. 

Then he coughs, and the moment’s over. (Oh well.) He turns and opens the next drawer. 

-

“We can’t go back to your hotel room. They’ll have followed your scent back to it!” 

“I need my passport!”

_“Why?”_

“So I can get _back_ into the US.” 

He glares at me and then at the horizon. 

“Fine.” He hands me the two straps of the duffle bag and unzips it. “I’m not breaking my hand on afanc face, though.”

-

Amazingly, my hotel room hadn’t been overrun by an angry afanc family. 

I’m packing like my life is on the line (kinda is), while my be-winged friend is on door-guarding duty. A gruesome part of me is wondering what getting mauled to death by an evil beaver would be like. Are there bottom chompers? Is it only the top teeth?

“Have you ever been bitten by an afanc?” I ask, scooping shower supplies into my bag. 

“Yeah.”

_Score._ A bubble of excitement expands in my chest. “What’d it feel like?”

“Hurt.” 

I wait for him to elaborate. 

He doesn’t. 

The bubble in my rib cage pops unceremoniously. 

“Okay then.”

I toss my overnight back into my suitcase and start a quick doublecheck when—

_BANG!_

“Fuck.” I hear wings hit the wall as he braces himself against the door. I run back to my suitcase and get zipping. 

_BANG! BANG! BANG!!_

_CRACK_

“Ow.” 

_BAM!_

“Shepard!” _BANG!_ “—the window!”

I scoop the bags off the bed and drag them to the window. When I glance at the door and see a gnarly paw trying to grab at his face. _Yikes._

I reach for the locks on the frame—

**BAM**

I fall back on my ass. My heart is fucking pounding— 

An afanc’s tail is lashing at the window. A wicked crack slices through the middle of the pane. 

“We’re on the third floor!” I shout. 

“Fuck me,” I hear from the door. 

He checks the bolt and then looks at me. A too-long beaver claw brushes against one of his curls. 

“Make a break for it?” I ask. 

He nods. Another paw breaks through at the other side of his head. “Get ready to open the window.” 

I jump to my feet and unlock the window before pushing down on the frame. Two teeth the size of my forearm scrape at the glass. Its eyes are similar to a lizard’s, except the slit goes sideways. (Like a goat, or something.) It’s kind of amazing. I wonder if the pupils dilate similarly to a cat’s—

There’s heavy footfalls and then: “Now!” 

I throw open the window and manage to jump out of the way as he barrels in with a left uppercut. Bone crunches, and there’s a gurgled scream before the afanc slips from the building. 

He starts trying to climb out the window opening with the grace of a gazelle with four broken legs and a concussion. 

“Shit.”

“Do you need help there, buddy?”

There’s a giant crash, and the door comes flying off its hinges. 

“Oh, fuck a crow.” I grab the gazelle’s broken ass legs, and shove him out of the window. 

_“Christ!”_

_I’m sure he’ll forgive me,_ I think as three afancs charge at me. 

I pick up his duffle bag and swing it at the first one’s head. This _really_ isn’t how I was hoping tonight would go. I still don’t know if these things make dams or not. 

“Shepard!” I turn and see him hovering outside. “Throw the bags!” 

I manage to toss out my suitcase, but then a claw is hooked onto my jeans, and I’m going down. 

I bite my tongue when I hit the floor, and a sharp pain blooms on my cheekbone. I ignore it in favor of kicking some teeth in. 

The blood spewing from the afanc’s gums doesn’t deter it from clawing its way up my pant leg. I jerk and pull and the fabric rips, but it’s still attached to me, drooling blood. (Turns out there’s no bottom teeth.)

I give up and undo my fly. I trip my way out of my pants, lose a shoe. Another afanc bites my hand (He was right. It hurts.), and then I’m falling out of the window. 

He catches me, but it’s as forgiving as hitting blacktop. The wind rushes out of me as we climb up, up and away. 

I’m panting, and bleeding, and I think my balls are gonna freeze off with only boxers to keep me covered. But… 

The first fingers of daylight are scratching the world awake, and there’s just enough light to see the hands that are holding my waist are a dark gray. 

I turn my head, and see that tonight’s companion is now made entirely out of moving stone. 

_Dude._

-

“Gargoyle,” he wheezes at me. We’ve taken a rest stop on a roof. He sounds like he’s just run ten miles. He’s not sweating, though. I wonder if he sweats when he has normal skin. 

“ _Really?”_

“Yeah. I turn to rock in the daytime.” He runs a hand over his hair. It makes an odd scuffing sound. “‘S why I work nightshift.” 

“Fascinating.” I touch his arm. It’s rough and cold. “And is this your, like, final form? Gargoyles are usually… creepier, I thought.” 

He turns to me and opens his mouth into a snarl. His teeth grow long and sharp, his nose turns up further, his tongue forks. It’s fucking _awesome._

“Whoa.” I say, staring at his canines. “Can I touch them?” 

“Yeah, sure.” He sounds like he has a lisp now. 

I bring my finger up and stroke along the bottom of his tooth. It’s sharp and dry— no saliva. I wonder if he can produce _any_ liquids when he’s like this. 

My thumb wanders down and touches his forked tongue. It presses back against the pad of my thumb, and gently scrapes upwards.

I take my hand away, but don’t stop staring at his mouth. 

“Thanks.” 

“No problem.” His bottom canines stick out when he closes his mouth and licks his lips. 

“I should probably put on pants.” 

“Okay.”

“Yeah…” 

Kissing a rock is kind of weird. Like, it feels good when he sticks his tongue in my mouth, but also I feel like I’m getting the inner mouth equivalent of road rash. 

He pulls back, looking a little dazed. He watches my mouth as he speaks. “Omaha’s in America, yeah?” 

I give him another kiss. “Yeah.” 

His hand slips under the bottom of my sweater. He’s cold as fuck. 

“I’ve always wanted to go to America.” 

I drag my hand over the sweet angel shirt and down his chest. 

“Does this mean you’ll tell me your name now?” 

He snorts. The hand creeps further under the sweater. “It’s Simon.” 

My heart skips a beat. 

_Simon._

And then I’m grinning. 

“Cool.”

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
